Wiedergeburt 3

by Brandon Varnell

  I crashed feet first into the nearest cloaked figure. A loud thud rang out as my feet smashed against the person’s head, launching them clean off their feet and sending them soaring backward. That person slammed into the ground, skipped across it, and then rolled for several meters before going still.

  I landed on my back, groaning as all the air left my lungs. Stupid. That was very stupid. What had I been thinking? I climbed to my feet and tried to shake the cobwebs from my head.

  “?!”

  A strange noise emitted from the other cloaked figure as they tried to leap back, but Kari had used my distraction to appear before them. She moved her hands around in a strange pattern, creating several intersecting points of light as her Spiritual Power surged. Her hand movements created a five-pointed star, which she thrust forward, launching the attack at the cloaked figure. It struck the person full on. They were blasted backward, slamming into a tree—which splintered underneath the impact— and striking the ground with enough force to leave a small crater.

  “Are you okay?” asked Kari as she held out her hand. However, she became startled when the girl huddling against the tree suddenly scrambled toward her and grabbed her wrist with enough strength to leave a mark.

  “P-please! You have to help me save my friends! They’ve all been taken!”

  “Taken?” Kari did not seem bothered by the girl’s fierce grip as she glanced at me, then the cloaked figures, and then at the girl again. “Are you talking about these people who were chasing you?”

  While Kari spoke with the girl, I glanced at the figures. However, to my surprise, the cloaked figures were gone. The one that I had struck was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, the figure that Kari had hit with her Spiritual Light Technique had also vanished. There was nothing but his cloak lying on the ground by the tree.

  The girl, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen or so, nodded. “My friends and I had gone over to the ruins on a dare, but then some people showed up! They came right out from within the ruins and attacked us! The others were all taken! I… I didn’t want to leave them, but I had to go find help, so I—”

  “I understand.” Kari placed her other hand on the girl’s hand, slowly pulling the frightened teenager’s fingers from around her wrist. She then took the girl’s hand in both of hers. There was a warm smile on her face. “Do not worry. We will rescue your friends.”

  Since it looked like Kari had already come to a decision, I didn’t dare argue with her—not that I would. I was worried about those girls too.

  “Can you lead us to the ruins?” I asked. “It will be faster if we have someone show us the way.”

  The girl’s face went pale when I asked her to show us the way, and her body soon began shaking like a leaf caught in a whirlwind. For a moment, I thought she would deny my request. That would have made it hard for us to rescue her friends. I didn’t know what these people wanted with a couple of teenage girls, but my instincts told me they would not be alive if we took too long to find them.

  Fortunately, the girl took a deep breath, regained her determination, and nodded.

  “Y-yes, I will lead you there. It’s this way.”

  As the girl took off into the forest, Kari and I glanced at each other before following her.

  We traveled for a distance, passing by trees, racing over shrubs, and taking seemingly random turns. I wasn’t sure this girl knew where she was going. However, within less than five minutes, she brought us to a slow stop.

  “It’s… just over here,” the girl said with a gesture.

  Immediately in front of her was a large clearing with a ruined building in the center of it. It was made from numerous large stones that had been laid on top of each other. Each stone was about two heads wide and one tall. There were a lot of other stones of varying sizes as well. The entrance was created from a large archway that seemed to have been carved from a single stone. The stones on the roof looked a little broken, but I guessed that was due to age. Crawling along the walls were numerous vines.

  “Your friends were taken in there?” I asked.

  “Y-yes.” The girl nodded. “We were just playing around outside when these people rushed out of the ruins and grabbed us.”

  Kari and I shared another look. I could already see from her expression that she wanted to rush in and save them, so I turned back to the girl.

  “Stay here and wait for us,” I said. “We’ll go inside and rescue your friends.”

  “T-thank you very much!” The girl bowed her head to me.

  Kari and I did not have our weapons on hand, which did decrease our fighting efficiency a little, but we kept our guard up. We were more than capable of using Spiritual Techniques without weapons. That said, I would have felt a lot safer with a sword in my hand.

  We went up to the ruin entrance. The interior was so dark that we couldn’t even see a meter ahead of us. Kari moved her right hand in a circle pattern, her Spiritual Power fluctuating as she created a ball of light that illuminated the area. There was nothing before us except for stone walls, ceiling, and floor.

  “Let’s go,” Kari whispered.

  I nodded and followed her into the dark hallway, her sphere of light the only thing lighting our path.

  This hallway was quite weird. Not only was the floor surprisingly smooth, which I would not have expected given the derelict entrance, but there were many motifs and carvings engraved into the walls. One featured a man with pointy ears standing above several other people and holding a sword above his head as if leading an army. There was another where that same man was holding a giant sphere over his head. The more murals we passed, the more I realized that all of them featured this pointy-eared individual.

  “Do you think these ruins were some kind of temple?” I wondered out loud.

  “I don’t know.” Kari eyed the walls. “I wish we could explore this place, but first, we have to make sure those girls are okay.”

  “Do you mind if I ask why you decided to help that girl?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” asked Kari. “Do you not want to help?”

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to help. What’s happening here doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  Kari stopped walking and turned around, startling me. There was a look in her eyes that caused me to freeze. She studied me for a moment, and then, unbidden, a sad smile crossed her face.

  “You are afraid of not being able to save those girls, aren’t you?” Her words made me look away in shame as I remembered the people from Nevaria, the ones who had run into the Endless Desert with us and died. “Eryk, I know you are afraid of not being strong enough to save someone after extending your hand to help them, but you shouldn’t let that stop you. We have the power to save those girls. If we have the power to help people, we should put that power to good use.”

  “I… yes, you’re right,” I said at last. “Sorry for being so indecisive.”

  Kari shook her head. “It is fine. I do not blame you for feeling this way—not after what we’ve been through. Anyway, let’s keep going.”

  “I’m right beside you.”

  These ruins had numerous passageways, spacious rooms, and hidden doors located inside. It was far bigger than I had originally thought. While it didn’t seem large on the outside, that was only because the outside only showed the first floor. After taking a stairwell that led down to the next level, the number of passages, branching hallways, and rooms increased.

  Two of the things I noticed about these ruins were how all the walls were covered in carvings and how each one featured that pointy-eared character. Some of the larger rooms contained statues of this person, which made me wonder who he was. I think what really astounded me was how these carvings and statues still appeared to be in relatively good shape despite being who knew how old. Just what sort of building techniques were used to create objects like this that could withstand the test of time?

  I could tell from how she stared at the statues that Kari wanted to stu
dy them more, but she held herself back.

  As we descended to the third level after finding another stairwell, loud voices echoed to us. We paused and strained our ears to listen harder. Those voices weren’t talking. They were screams of despair and cries of fear.

  The two of us did not hesitate to rush down the hall. We used the echoes of the screams to locate where they were coming from. Several twists and turns later, the two of us were standing on something that looked like an inside balcony that extended around a room.

  This particular room wasn’t the largest we had come across, but it was the most intricate. Six stone statues of the pointy-eared figure were standing in rows of three on either side of the room. To our right was another entrance on the floor below. To our left was an even larger statue. It was the same statue as all the others: a man with long hair, pointy ears, and a flowing robe that reached down to his sandal-clad feet. The difference was its size. All the others had been life-sized, but this one was at least three times taller than me.

  In the center of this room was an elevated platform. There were seven figures on this platform. Six of them were the same cloaked individuals as the two we had fought in the forest, but the last one was a girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. She was in the center, lying on her back, her arms bound above her head and her legs stretched out as chains pinned her to the ground. Tears streamed down her face as she cried and pleaded with these cloaked people to spare her. There were five other girls, each of whom was chained to one of the six statues.

  “Please let me go… let me go… I’m sorry for coming here. We’ll leave, I swear. We won’t tell anyone about what we saw here,” the girl in the center begged between sobs. The other five were also shedding tears as they made the same pleas for their lives.

  I frowned and scooted closer to the edge. No one had noticed us yet. I glanced at Kari, who was also preparing to leap down.

  The cloaked figures ignored the girl’s pleading as one of them stepped forward and produced a dagger from within their robe. It was an ugly thing. The dagger was jagged and made from a black material that glinted in the light. If I had to describe it with a single word, the dagger just looked evil. Oddly enough, while the dagger appeared solid, it had a very ethereal look to it. Wisps of black miasma were wafting from it, as though it was made of Spiritual Power instead of metal.

  As the cloaked figure raised the dagger above his head, the girls’ cries increased in volume.

  Kari and I acted.

  As I jumped off the balcony, Kari made a circular motion with her hand, and then thrust it forward like she was punching something. An arrow of light shot out and knocked the dagger from the cloaked figure’s grip. As the dagger clattered to the ground, it burst into black smoke, and the cloaked person looked up just in time to receive my boots to their face.

  A loud bang echoed around the room as I slammed into this person, the power of my heels launching them clean off the ground. I flipped and landed back on my feet. The person I had launched myself at wasn’t so lucky. They slammed into one of the other cloaked people, sending them both to the ground.

  The hairs on my arms suddenly raised as I detected danger. I leapt back as an arrow of darkness shot through the place where I’d been standing. Spinning around, I generated a ball of lightning in my hand, which I threw at the person who had attacked me. Unfortunately for me, this person was quicker than I gave them credit for. They threw something at me—a dagger—and when I moved to avoid it, they darted through the doorway and disappeared. I thought about chasing them, but helping rescue the girls was more important than killing the enemy.

  By this point, Kari had launched herself from the balcony as well. While she was still airborne, she used the same circular and thrust motion to launch numerous light arrows at the cloaked figures down below. The two figures that were knocked down during our initial assault were pierced, but the rest avoided the attacks. However, the two who were struck gave an unusual and shocking reaction to being pierced by those arrows.

  Loud screeches that didn’t sound the least bit human resounded from the cloaks of the two individuals. They echoed all around us. The wailing cries were worse than someone scraping two rocks together. I would have covered my ears if I could. As the pair of cloaked figures continued to wail, their bodies writhed as smoke poured from them. In less than a second, the two figures were gone, evaporating into black dust. Only their cloaks remained.

  The remaining four cloaked figures shrank back when Kari waved her hands above her head and created several massive spears of light, which crackled intensely with repressed Spiritual Power. It seemed she had also recognized that these cloaked people were weak against the light element. Without giving them a chance to fight back, she launched the light spears at the cloaked figures.

  Three of the four spears impaled the cloaked individuals, which burst into black dust the same way the last two she had attacked did. The last one avoided the attack and tried to scramble away. I appeared in front of them, however, and attacked with a powerful kick. My attack caught them in the chest. However, I received a great shock when this person landed on the ground and suddenly disappeared inside of their own shadow! I stared at the person as they sank into the floor, so shocked I was unable to even consider stopping it.

  Then they were gone.

  “Can you sense them?” asked Kari.

  I frowned and squinted as I tried to sense any fluctuations of Spiritual Power, but I eventually shook my head. “I can’t detect anything. It could be that they really are gone, but they might also be able to mask their presence by using the shadows somehow.”

  “We’ll be careful then.” Kari made a swift decision. “Let’s break these chains and get the girls out of here.”

  Agreeing with her plan, I knelt next to the girl bound on the elevated platform and broke the chains by creating a lightning sword. The girl was still sobbing. However, as I pulled her to her feet, her cries became tears of gratitude.

  “T-thank you so much,” she sobbed. “I… those people were…”

  I only twitched a little when the girl fell into my chest and cried. Given what happened, I couldn’t blame this girl for bawling her eyes out like this, but I also wished she wouldn’t rub her runny nose all over my chest. She was getting snot on my clothes.

  Kari snickered at me as she used her light element to cut the chains binding the other girls. Unlike me, she had to use hand motions to create a sword that could cut the chains. She rotated her wrist and moved her hands up, then down, creating a sword of pure light. While the action was complicated, her light element worked even better than my lightning element when it came to cutting through steel.

  As the girl in my arms continued to sob and soak my shirt in at least two different types of fluid, I glanced at the platform we were standing on and frowned. This platform had numerous symbols etched onto its surface. I recognized them as runes, which were often found on Spiritual Technique Scrolls, but I had never seen them being used like this. Some buildings did have them for decorations. I also knew some cities like Vahn used runes to create appliances like those marvelous showers, stoves, and other convenient items I don’t remember seeing in Nevaria.

  Perhaps it was thanks to the ancient feeling of this place, or maybe it was because of what those cloaked figures had been going to do, but something about these runes sent a chill down my spine.

  “Hey, Kari. What do you make of this?” I asked after getting the girl to finally let go of me.

  After making sure the other girls were free, Kari jumped onto the platform and looked at the floor as well, a frown growing on her face as she studied the runes. She eventually shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I recognize most of these runes, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” She bit her lower lip. “We can come back here tomorrow and do a more thorough investigation. For now, let’s get these girls back home.”

  “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.”

&nb
sp; We led the girls outside, where their crying friend was waiting for them. All seven girls broke down and hugged each other, bawling their eyes out and making me look away in discomfort. I became even more uncomfortable when the group thanked me and Kari for rescuing them. Fortunately, Kari was much better at accepting thanks than me.

  The next day, we would go back to these ruins, but Kari would be unable to make sense of the runes. We wouldn’t learn about what they did until much later.

  * * *

  The next day, I woke up bright and early again to meet with the Eieren Family member who would be showing me to my potential new house. Lin had wanted to come along, but for very obvious reasons, I told her she couldn’t.

  “I believe you will like this house,” the young man from the other day said as he led me to what might become my new residence. “It has everything you asked for the previous day, plus a little extra.”

  “So long as it’s livable and has a lot of space, anything will do,” I mumbled.

  There were quite a few people on the street that day. A group of kids were running between the adults as they played a game of tag, some older people were chatting as they sat around and played hnefatafl at nearby tables, and a couple of low-class workers were lugging around a variety of goods. It seemed everyone was up and about at this time of day.

  We were in the northern section of Nevaria, which was consequently very close to where the Nadine Library was located. This section of the city was marked primarily by educational facilities where the children of lower-class citizens were taught. There were a couple of schools that taught language, math, and a few other basic academic courses. They were larger than the average building. Each one was about three stories in height, longer than they were wide, and marked by many windows without glass. While they weren’t the most luxurious buildings around, Empress Hilda had at least made sure they were sturdy and functional.